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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Body culture studies | 5/7 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_culture_studies | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:59:41.109537+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Trialectics of body culture == Body culture as a field of contradictions demands a dialectical approach, but it is not dualistic in character. Body culture studies have revealed trialectical relations inside the world of sports (Eichberg 1998, 2010; Bale 1996, 2002 and 2004). The hegemonic model of Western modern body culture is achievement sport, translating movement into records. Sportive competition follows the logic of productivity by bodily strain and forms a ranking pyramid with elite sports placed at the top and the losers at the bottom. Through sportive movement, people display a theatre of production. A contrasting model within modern body culture is delivered by mass sports. In gymnastics and fitness training, the body is disciplined by subjecting it to certain rules of "scientific", social geometrical or aesthetic order (Roubal 2007). By rhythmic repetition and formal homogenization, the individual bodies are integrated into a larger whole, which is recommended in terms of reproduction (→reproduction (economics)), as being healthy and educative. Through fitness sport, people absolve a ritual of reproductive correctness and integration. A third model is present in popular festivity, dance and play. In carnival and folk sport, people meet people by festive movement. This type of gathering may give life to the top-down arrangements of both productive achievement sport and reproductive fitness sport, too. But the body experience of popular festivity, dance, play and game is a-productive in itself – it celebrates relation in movement. Practices of sport in their diversity and their historical change, thus, clarify inner contradictions inside social life more generally – among these the contradictions between state, market and civil society. The trialectics of body culture throw light on the complexity of societal relations.
== Body cultures in plural == "Culture" in singular is an abstraction. The study of body culture is always a study of body cultures in plural. Body cultures show human life in variety and differences, assimilation and distinction, conflicts and contradictions. This demands a comparative approach to otherness, and this is the way several studies in body culture have gone. Culture was studied as cultures already by the school of Cultural Relativism in American anthropology (American Anthropological Association) in the 1930s (Ruth Benedict). Postcolonial studies have taken this pluralistic perspective up again (Bale 1996 and 2004; Brownell 1995; Azoy 2003; Leseth 2004). The discourse in singular about "the body in our society" became problematic when confronted with body cultures in conflict and tension. The plurality and diversity of body cultures is, however, not only a matter of outward relations. There are also body cultures in plural inside a given society. The study of different class habitus (→class culture), youth cultures, gender cultures (→gender identity) etc. opened up for deeper insights into the differentiation of civil society.
== Configurational analysis == Body culture studies try to understand bodily practice as patterns revealing the inner tensions and contradictions of a given society. In order to analyze these connections, the study of body culture has turned attention to the configurations of movement in time and space, the energy of movement, its interpersonal relations and objectification (→Configurational analysis (Konfigurationsanalyse)). Above this basis, people build a superstructure of institutions and ideas, organising and reflecting body culture in relation to collective actions and interests (Eichberg 1978; Dietrich 2001: 10-32; see keyword 2).
== Body culture in Tattoos == The concept of tattoos being a symbols to represent one being part of a group or a member of a tribe can are indications of how tattoos are used to study culture. In most cultures, tattoos play an important role in the society to show a person has completed a rite of passage. Most tribes and gangs use tattoos as a way to identify which society they belong to and a hierarchical status. Just as how symbolic anthropology by Victor Turner describes how symbols make a culture, this can be true for tattoos. Tattoos represent a belief system, which is connected to the stages of life, as we see in the tattoo culture of the Northeastern part of India, where several ethnic communities use tattoo to make meanings about a women's phase of life (status of infancy, puberty, marriage, motherhood).